


The End of Civilization and Other Pitfalls of Domesticity

by goingdownin221b



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Ficlet, Fluff, Parentlock, This came out of nowhere, Uncle Mycroft, here have some mush, short and sweet, the British government gets sentimental
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 11:58:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18590806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goingdownin221b/pseuds/goingdownin221b
Summary: Mycroft Holmes and Rosamund Watson's evolving regard for one another.I.e., "I probably shouldn't enjoy your company, but so help me I do."





	The End of Civilization and Other Pitfalls of Domesticity

"I've never been very good with them," Mycroft had said.

"Babies?" Sherlock had asked.

The British Government had wrinkled his nose and clarified, _"Humans."_

That attitude had been all well and fine and easily maintained while Mary was alive, but afterward...well, John moved back to 221B with his little girl, didn't he, and then any time Mycroft needed Sherlock, the child was always underfoot, like a sticky wad of bubblegum.

And irritatingly, Sherlock answered his phone less and less, necessitating car rides to 221B both day and night if Mycroft wished to get his little brother's attention at all. Because, of course, said attention had to be wrangled away from John and the baby (Rosamund; he had committed the name to memory against his will).

Rosie, as she was affectionately known around the household, was a very small thing who necessitated the use of a chaotic amalgamation of _other things_ , such as diapers and dummies and food stuffs and rattles and creams and it was all just so much NOISE.

And, for some reason, she _liked him._ Rosie, that was, the child--this Rosamund Watson-- _liked_ Mycroft. He couldn't fathom why.

Few things are more stubborn than little girls who have taken an interest in something. She liked to first paw at, and then--as she grew--cling to, and eventually climb him whenever he sat. It was like visiting the zoo to see the monkeys and unexpectedly becoming the tree.

It is impossible to set a toddler aside as one would a tea cup. Again, such a tactic results in a most unacceptable level of _noise._ Eventually Mycroft, a broken shell of his former concrete self, was forced to admit that any foreign government looking to infiltrate and monitor its enemy country covertly would be wisest to send in its Trojan horse in the form of a tiny blonde Watson.

Mr. All-hearts-are-broken, Mr. Don't-get-involved, Mr. Ice Man, Mr. The-only-one-I've-ever-held-hands-with-is-my-umbrella, made a fatal error one day when he offered the child a sweet (which he most certainly had _not_ slipped into his pocket from the dish in his office with that very intention in mind). The look on the child's face--widening of the already-wide navy blue eyes, taking in his face with rejuvenated adoration--had effectively tossed rock salt onto the ice ball in his chest. It had also proven to Rosie that all her intuitions were not misguided. And thus, civilizations have fallen.

What followed was the most demeaning, degrading, humiliating evolution of Mycroft's character that he could ever have once imagined. He would come away from 221B covered in finger paint and unicorn stickers. (On one particularly memorable afternoon Mycroft, having stepped outside with some foreign diplomats following a tentative but satisfactory meeting to join them for a smoke, opened his umbrella under the afternoon's gloom only to be showered with several cups worth of rainbow glitter. And had _laughed!_ )

One evening John and Sherlock arrived home from a _date_ (yes, that had begun, long before stated evening) and were shocked from their revoltingly amorous attitudes by the sight of Mycroft, who had relieved Molly as the designated sitter. He was seated on a frilly purple blanket on the floor of the lounge, having a tea-and-cupcake-and-feather-boa party with the precocious four-year-old. Both were sipping imaginary liquid from their cups with great sophistication and dignity. 

Mycroft didn't even pretend not to be engrossed in the game of make-believe. He shooed the other men away impatiently, telling them they had not been invited. Rosie found the idea of her fathers, who in her mind ruled all of time and space, _not being invited_ to _anything_ uproariously funny. For weeks afterward she uninvited them to all manner of things: dinner, bath time, goodnight tickles.

And so that is the story of how Mycroft "East Wind" Holmes became swept along in the domesticity one Sherlock Holmes and one John Watson created in a little flat on Baker Street, changing him irrevocably from The British Government to Uncle Mycroft.

Which, as it turned out, he was pretty good at being.


End file.
